For these snowbound days, I’d like to propose two genre-defying streaming films that you probably missed in theaters. Both premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, could be described as subversive takes on “Beauty and the Beast,” involve the theater, and are provocative enough to spark ample post-viewing discussion. Finally, both are on Max and rentable on Apple and a few other platforms.
A Different Man has the higher profile of the two: Sebastian Stan won a Golden Globe and a Silver Berlin Bear for his lead performance, and the film is an Oscar nominee for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling. The achievement in question lies in transforming the conventionally handsome star into our protagonist, a struggling actor named Edward, who has large facial tumors resulting from neurofibromatosis.
If you’re expecting just another film for which an actor donned prosthetics to impersonate someone “less fortunate,” however, writer-director Aaron Schimberg (Chained for Life) has surprises in store for you. We’re barely through the first act when an experimental drug transforms the mopey, socially awkward Edward back into the smooth-faced man we always knew was underneath.
Before Edward changed, he made a strong impression on his neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), on whom he has an unrequited crush. She’s written a play to explore the guilt she felt as she let him down gently. When Edward shows up for the audition, he is unrecognizable — indeed, he’s given himself a new name, “Guy Moratz,” and re-created himself as a blandly attractive real estate agent. But Ingrid agrees to cast him as her version of Edward, provided he wears a mask.
Enter Oswald, a wildly charismatic and extroverted actor who still has visible neurofibromatosis (as does Adam Pearson, who plays him). Suddenly competing against someone who combines a physique similar to his own past one with a radically different personality, Guy/Edward faces the surreal possibility that he’s not the best person to play “himself.”
Schimberg’s nuanced, contrarian approach to his subject reflects his own experience as someone born with a cleft palate. In an interview with the AV Club, he said that “you have to work around the audience’s prejudices, not only about disfigurement, but about films about disfigurement” — such as the expectation that such stories will be tragic or heartwarming.
Edward’s story is certainly neither. The screenplay presents him as a wan, passive man with no backstory and little agency. Unlike Demi Moore’s character in The Substance, he doesn’t choose his transformation (it’s deemed medically necessary), and even his rebrand as Guy just sort of happens. Edward’s lack of inspirational qualities is the film’s point, the key to the central, thought-provoking contrast between him and the dynamic Oswald. But the protagonist’s black hole of charisma is also a problem that neither Schimberg’s screenplay nor Stan’s performance entirely transcends. We’re often in the position of Ingrid, wondering guiltily why we’re spending time with this sad sack.
If A Different Man had given us a clearer window into Edward’s introversion, the film might have been as fascinating to watch as it is to think about. It’s still well worth seeing as a case study of how people sabotage themselves by confusing interior and exterior change, and a satire of a culture eager to create palatable, uplifting stories at the expense of thorny truths.
Like Edward, the protagonist of Your Monster is someone else’s muse and not happy about it. We meet Laura Franco (a charming Melissa Barrera) as she’s released from the hospital after cancer surgery. Her odiously smug boyfriend, Jacob (Edmund Donovan), dumped her in the wake of her diagnosis. Now, he’s set to direct the Broadway version of the campy feminist musical that the couple developed together. Laura rushes to the audition — only to watch the role designed for her go to a starlet (Meghann Fahy).
It’s enough to send anyone into a funk, which writer-director Caroline Lindy illustrates in a funny montage involving pajamas and pie. What finally dries Laura’s tears is the discovery that she’s sharing her mom’s New York brownstone with a monster (Tommy Dewey), who resides in her childhood closet. And the place isn’t big enough for the two of them.
If this sounds like a romantic comedy with a fairy-tale twist, it is. Once they’re done bickering over the thermostat, lovelorn Laura falls hard for Monster, who’s the type of “monster” that Ron Perlman was in the 1980s “Beauty and the Beast” series — a sweet guy with token extra hair and makeup. He also boasts a tart tongue, a penchant for Shakespeare and emotional intelligence.
Barrera and Dewey have chemistry, and more sparks fly in this low-budget film, much of which takes place in the brownstone, than in many more heralded rom-coms. The blissed-out dancing scene, a staple of the genre, is beautifully executed.
But Your Monster also has darker undertones that gradually come to the fore. A new love may soothe Laura’s messy emotions about her breakup, but it doesn’t erase them. Monster gives her space to feel them — indeed, encourages her to embrace the anger she’s been repressing so she can stay part of Jacob’s show.
Everything builds to a climax that will divide viewers, open as it is to multiple interpretations. What’s harder to dispute is that Your Monster has one of the more memorable finales in recent memory, thanks to Barrera’s riveting performance of an original musical number by the Lazours. While Edward in A Different Man remains frustrated by his inability to channel main character energy, Laura claims hers, and how.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.
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